Friday, December 28, 2012

Conservative on Target! 8/27/12

Does Debt Actually Hurt Future Generations?As the national debt approaches $16.4 trillion, it is worth reminding ourselves why that debt should give us cause for concern. Government debt represents excessive government spending, which itself can be harmful because it crowds out private investment by redirecting resources to projects that are designed more for political than economic benefit. But debt itself -- outlays in excess of receipts -- has consequences beyond that of even a "responsible" level of spending, since it represents payments that future generations will have to make. By racking up debt today, we are imposing a burden on our children. Borrowing, then, remains the most politically feasible option for the government to finance its spending. Taxation will always be unpopular, and inflation makes its presence felt eventually. Borrowing the money, however, conveniently passes the bill to future generations -- who will not even realize that they have been cheated and robbed if we keep repeating the meaningless myth that "we owe it to ourselves."Climate Science vs Politics: The Road AheadThere is good news and bad news about climate. The good news is that science evidence has made it quite clear that the human contribution to a possible global warming is minor; in fact it cannot even be identified in the data record. The bad news is that the media and politicians pay no attention whatsoever to the science and are marching ahead full-speed with efforts to control CO2 emissions -- thereby hurting the economy, destroying jobs, and stunting economic growth. They are under the illusion that there is a nearly complete scientific consensus in support of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW).Murder by Numbers[Blow away anti-gunners with the facts in this article! Here are just a couple.]

Listening to the latest media chatter, one could get the impression that murder in the US is historically bad and getting worse. As the Reverend Al Sharpton put it, "The time for their talk is over. Now's the time for action, and real change on gun control."

Actually, now would seem to be a very bad time for such action. The reason is simple: the murder rate is historically low and is already trending downward. In fact, the murder rate in 2011 was the lowest since 1961: 4.7 murders per 100,000 people. In only 5 years since 1910 has it been lower: 1955-59, when it was only slightly lower at 4.5 or 4.6....

While the most recent murder rate is fairly low for the United States, we often hear that other countries like Australia, Japan and the UK have much lower murder rates. If we want to compare countries, we should not "cherry pick." Let's look at all countries. The United Nations collects such data. Out of 206 countries, the US ranks 103 - smack in the middle.